Blogged by Flickr

On June 10th, Flickr blogged this photo of mine taken inside the Dog Chapel at Dog Mountain in St. Johnsbury. You can read the Flickr Blog Post here. I was wondering what happened on that day because this photo received 20 favorites (on that day) and my Flickr account received 1,353 hits. Many other of the Dog Mountain photos were favorited, also. I went to my Flickr Stats page (even though I have linked to my stats page, I am not certain you can see it if you click) and clicked on the domain with the most referrals and found the pleasant cause of all of this activity. Thank you, Flickr!

Dog Mountain Set

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STS-119 Shuttle Discovery With Moon (200903110001HQ)

STS-119 Shuttle Discovery With Moon (200903110001HQ), originally uploaded by nasa hq photo.

NASA is now on Flickr. Go now and add them as one of your contacts.

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Friday Fractal: FractalWorks: Fractal Diamond Wiki Colors

Download the newest version of FractalWorks, then join the Flickr FractalWorks Group. This is a 3-D fractal rendering. If you have the new FractalWorks installed on your Mac, click on this Fractal Diamond link, then click on the link underneath the Diamond and your FractalWorks will automatically open and render the Diamond. I have done it and it works. I haven't created my own fractal yet. I bet you wish you got a Mac!

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Pansy's "Life Poster": How To Make It

There is a new way to make collages and life posters at the HP Community Mosaic site. This site works in conjunction with the Flickr HP Community Mosaic Group. I used these tools to create Pansy's life poster above. The directions below are for Macs. Hopefully, a PC user will use the comments to modify/correct these directions for PCs.

1. Select all of the photos that you want to use (a minimum of 10 is suggested).
2. Upload these to your Flickr account and tag them with a very unique tag so that you can identify them in the group photo pool later. I used "meeyauw" and "Pansy."
3. Join the Flickr HP Community Mosaic Group.
4. Send your selected photos to the group.
5. Return to the HP Community Mosaic web site.
6. See the mosaic in the bottom left quadrant of the screen? Click on that.
7. In the next screen, click in the text box and type your unique tags. If you have just uploaded your photos to the group, it may take a couple of minutes for them to be seen by the system. Be patient, it works.
8. Click "generate." A new Flash screen will appear with your photos.
9. Click "customize and print." Another Flash screen will appear with a white sheet of "paper" with your photos on it.
10. Click and drag your photos around until you have what you want. If you want to discard a photo, simply drag it off of the sheet of paper. When you are finished, click "print it!."
    
11. The rest of the directions are for Mac only if you would like to manipulate this collage image before printing.
12. After you click "print it!" on the HP site, a page set up dialog box appears. Click OK.
13. Now a Print dialog box appears. Click "Preview." Keep the HP window open on your desktop, just "in case."
14. Preview will now create a .pdf file for you, and you can now create a .jpg image from this.
15. If you like what you see, continue. If not, return to #10 above.
16. Choose the "select tool" in Preview. Draw a rectangle around your collage, trimming off any excess white edges you may not want.
17. Now we will crop that image. Press  + K and a crop dialog box appears. Click OK.
18. Now you have a new .pdf page with your cropped image. Go to the File Menu and select "save as . . . "
19. In the save dialog box, select JPG, name your file, save it, and you are done!

This is a very awkward way to make a collage, but it is the only way I have been able to do this with free software on a Mac. Which is so irritating! I took my collage of Pansy and used Photoshop Elements to fill some white spaces with color. I then used ImageWell to frame the image. Is there any easier way? I hope so.

Please be aware that any photo that you put into the HP Community Mosaic Group photo pool is available to anybody anywhere to use for a mosaic. This is the best use for these tools: you can create a mosaic of anything you desire (like trees), simply by inputting the tag you want at the HP mosaic site. If you don't want anybody using your photos, don't put them there. When I called up my photos of Buddy for a collage, I got somebody's photo of a hat!

I wanted to make one collage of all seven of my cats and announce my new Catster membership and learn from you about Catster activities. But this method of making a collage is so cumbersome that I am re-thinking that. If we have a snowstorm and a snowday, perhaps I will spend the time to do it. Right now, I have too many photos to choose from, so this method of making a collage would be very lengthy.

A note to Mom Unplugged: this is what I was going to do for the Christmas week Unplugged Project. A tad late, huh? This was also going to be my Cats On Tuesday post for this past week. Late again. But at least I got it in for Caturday.

Technorati Tags: HP Community Mosiac, Flickr, Preview, ImageWell, Photoshop Elements, photo collage, Macintosh, Mom Unplugged, Unplugged Project, Cats On Tuesday, Catster, Caturday
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Shaking Dry

shaking dry, originally uploaded by paul+photos=moody.

This is, I think, the third photo of paul+photos=moody that I have blogged. Paul is also a Vermonter. I found his loon photos immediately after I posted my own. There seem to be a lot of loon photos on Flickr suddenly. But click here to see Paul's. His shots of baby loons are wonderful.

I urge you to go look because they are clear, close up, and amazing.

Technorati tags: loon Gavia+immer paul+moody=photos

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Wildflower from Long Pond

I will update this post with an identification when I get it.
vtpeacenik on Flickr identified this as Turtlehead (Chelone glabra).

Do you know what it is?

Technorati tags: turtlehead Chelone+glabra

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Tips For GIMP Spinning Globes

Please note: I cannot find the Script-Fu package for you to download right now. Perhaps you can. Perhaps it comes with GIMP and I have completely forgotten!

I had several people ask me for more details about these spinning globes. I don't know anything about Photoshop but I bet you could make them there. I used Skitch to make the image with my name on it and GIMP to make the globe. For brevity, I will assume that you can figure out how to use GIMP. You will also need Script-Fu scripts. Install them in GIMP. And please remember that I am learning all of this myself. I only am giving you the tips that I have learned. I am not telling you that my way is the only way (my way is probably the crookedest way!). Today I found the GIMP wiki and it seems to have a lot of basic information that I need to learn.

On a Mac? Go here for more GIMP info. MAC OS X users: you need to install the X11 windowing protocol which is available at Apple. If I could do it, you can, too. Just e-mail or scream for help. (Or buy MacGIMP on CD and it'll do all that for you. I'm about at the point of doing that myself.)

On Windows? Go here.

Are you really serious about GIMP? Join GUG (GIMP Users Group). Join the Flickr GIMP Users group. They have lots of help in the discussions but you cannot read the discussions unless you join the group.

Now that you are all set up and running GIMP with Script-Fu, open a window or tab with THIS PAGE. The directions there are perfect, almost.

TIP: Scale your image to 1:1 (a square). Square images make spheres, rectangular images make oblate spheroids.

This is the image that I used for these globes:

Experiment with the smallest size image you can tolerate. I went down to 170x170 (px) and after uploading "small" versions in Blogger my yellow spheres are the size you see here. I heard the comments on my first spinning globe: it makes people nuts! So the smaller the better. It made me nuts, I can't even tolerate having my blog page open now. I have to add a few blog posts to push the spinning off my screen.

Play with the direction that you want your globe to spin. I think text is better going right to left instead of the default left to right.

If you use a photograph, you will get a seam in your globe. If you create a graphic image as I did here, without borders, you won't have a seam.

The instructions for saving in the tutorial Spinning Globe link seem to be off a bit (or perhaps it is different for a Mac). This is how I save my gif image after it has been optimized and after I have played it back to make sure it is what I want:

Hit control/shift/S: a dialog box opens. Type in the name of your image and add the .gif suffix. Select the folder that you want to save it to and hit OK or Enter or whatever it says. Then follow the tutorial directions again.

I set the spin rate at 15 for these yellow globes and you can see how fast they are spinning! In fact, I wanted to see if they are any slower than the 100, 200, and 300 ones I have made but I have not checked that out.


Blogger will host animated gifs but they won't animate! You need to host your stuff elsewhere, like ImageShack. You will probably have to play with the size that you import. I imported my yellow globes as "small."

That is all I have at the moment. I will be revising this again tomorrow when I have more energy and am thinking more clearly. Don't stay up all night making these like I did. You will pay dearly for it tomorrow.

Technorati tags: GIMP Script-Fu spinning+globe photography Flickr MacGIMP

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The Most Interesting Pictures by meeyauw

The most interesting pictures by meeyauw

To see yours, go to The Most Interesting Pictures By . . . and put in your flickr user name.

Thank you to HarryCalgary for the link.

Technorati tags: meeyauw photographs Flickr most+interesting HarryCalgary

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First Quarter Moon

Evening sky was bright blue. I used a tripod with 10x zoom. This is my first serious attempt.

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Footloose Flicker

A poor photo of a flicker but his foot is up there. They don't walk like this. Was he shaking his foot out? A flock of flickers is living in the old wild apple trees and come to dig up stuff all over the back door yard. I never knew flickers until I moved to Vermont. I even used to think they were grouse because of the way they fly off and the sounds that they make. You can see my good flicker photos on Flickr.
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Photo Hunters: Fake

Currier's Market in Glover, Vermont is full of "fake" animals. They were once real but they all visited the taxidermist.

If you like, you can view all 32 images from this store in the Currier's Market set on Flickr.

Thank you for visiting. I hope you all are having a good summer!

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Wingnut's Bee Photo

A very good macro of a bumblebee by Wingnut. It was taken at May Pond. The flower is cow vetch. I have put all of Wingnut's photos on Flickr in his own set.

Be sure to click on this photo to view it large in a new window.

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Greensboro Butterfly

Least Skipper (Ancyloxypha numitor)

Thymelicus lineola – European Skipper

We went to Circus Smirkus today and had a wonderful time. We ran into my sister and her husband and grandchildren. At intermission I took photographs of these butterflies in a nearby field. More of them can be seen in my Butterflies and Moths Set on Flickr. I am too tired to post about Circus Smirkus now. I will catch up (a little bit) tomorrow.

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White Admiral Revisited

From this . . .


Bugman50 in Calgary, Alberta took the above photo of the larva of a White Admiral butterfly.

Four years ago, I took a photo of the White Admiral here in Vermont where they are common. This week I posted an entry on this blog when I finally identified the butterfly I had photographed on bugguide.net.

Bugman50 graciously allowed me to use his photo so that I could record and share the tremendous changes this beautiful animal goes through in its life. I thank him for his generosity. Be sure to click on the photos to see them full size. Also, please look at Bugman50's photos because they are amazing.

To this . . .

Limenitis arthemis

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Blue Moon On Saturday? Not So Fast

blue moon waxing, originally uploaded by paul+photos=moody.

There will not be a blue moon on Saturday. Please read Blue Moon on Thursday? Not So Fast from NPR on May 2007. Here is an abstract of the show:

All Things Considered, May 30, 2007 · There is a prevailing myth about what a blue moon is. Thursday, May 31, will bring the second full moon of the month. But that does not constitute a blue moon, as is popularly believed.

Kelly Beatty, editor of Night Sky magazine and executive editor of Sky and Telescope, tells Robert Siegel that a blue moon actually refers to the phenomenon of having four full moons in a season, which ordinarily has three.

Beatty also acknowledged that his magazine had a hand in giving the misconception credence. Sky and Telescope magazine recently put out a press release explaining its role in perpetuating the myth. It read, in part:

Our 1946 writer, amateur astronomer James Hugh Pruett (1886-1955), made an incorrect assumption about how the term had been used in the Maine Farmers' Almanac, where it consistently referred to the third full moon in a three-month season containing four. (By this definition there is no blue moon in May or June 2007, and the next one happens in May 2008.)

You can listen to the whole show from a link on the NPR page.

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A Chalk-fronted Corporal Dragonfly

Ladona julia

Ladona julia

Identified by Robert Overbeck at bugguide.net.

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Flickr Stats

Just click on it to get yours. I have put it on my flickr "home page": I can't get it to fit on my sidebar.

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Brown Moth

Eutrapela clemataria - Curve-toothed Geometer

This moth was on the screen of my front porch at 6 AM Saturday morning. It looks like a dead leaf wearing chrome shades. I was not able to get its face because of its position.

Eutrapela clemataria - Curve-toothed Geometer

The moth was identified by J.D. Roberts at bugguide.net.

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Mosquito Hawk

Please click on the photo to view it full size in a new window. I used iPhoto with abandon.

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Barn Swallow in Bridgewater Mills

After birding in Killington I stopped in Bridgewater Mills and saw this barn swallow. She allowed me to get very close for the photographs before she flew off.

I then found her nest under the eaves of the building.

This is the building where I found her at the corner of Routes 4 and 100. The nest is behind the S and she was behind the W. Photos of this swallow and other birds can be seen in my Birds set on Flickr.

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